The Witcher Enhanced Edition Impressions

It's out, it's good, you should play it.

When it originally came out last year, IGN PC's ex-editor-in-chief Dan Adams gave CD Projekt RED's The Witcher an 8.5, an editor's choice award, and the game eventually went on to win our best PC RPG of the Year award. Even though the title was certainly worthy of the praise, it wasn't without issues, something the developer took pretty seriously. They compiled a list of the top grievances players and reviewers had with the game and released it as The Witcher Enhanced Edition, which, about a year later, is now available.

The thing to note about the Enhanced Edition is, while it is a new retail box with lots of bonus content included alongside the updated game, it's also free to all those who already own The Witcher. So if you've got the box sitting around on your game shelf, or table, or section of floor, or whatever, and still have your registration code, you can install and register the product and upgrade it without any additional fee.

To be clear, this isn't just a simple patch that fixes a few bugs. It's a massive update that makes quite a few changes to the game, something you may be more used to seeing with subscription-based online RPGs. And on top of that, you also get the bonus content for free, which includes updated voice-over and text language support, the soundtrack, behind the scenes making-of movies, two new adventures, and a digital map. You don't have to download all the extra stuff, but it's there if you want it.

If you're totally unfamiliar with the game, Dan's review does a good job pointing out the strengths and weaknesses. It's got a dynamic storyline, an entertaining combat system, a strong protagonist in Geralt, some nice visuals, and an excellent orchestral soundtrack. On the other hand, the original release had excruciatingly long load times, enough to make me bail out of playing the game as I figured they'd eventually be fixed. After downloading the EE patch for the copy of the game I still had lying around, I was happy to find the load times had, in fact, been shortened.

Another point Dan brings up in his review is how cluttered the inventory gets, and therefore how difficult it is to manage the alchemy system. In the original release, the player's inventory was just a large, unorganized mess of items, making it particularly difficult to tell which alchemical reagents you had, which you needed, and made the process of finding all this information out a giant pain as you basically had to comb through everything you'd collected every time. With the EE patch you get a more organized inventory with separate satchels for items and alchemical components, as well as sorting options to keep things in order.

With those two issues out of the way, playing through The Witcher should be a much more enjoyable experience. If you've never played it, we absolutely recommend you go out and pick up the Enhanced Edition. The upgrade also works with old saves, so if you still have your progress stored on your hard drive, you can pick up where you left off with all the new features in place.